Serial Entrepreneur Joe Kraus Joins EFF

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: June 23, 2005 6:06:17 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Serial Entrepreneur Joe Kraus Joins EFF



Serial Entrepreneur Joe Kraus Joins EFF

By RACHEL KONRAD
.c The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who helped  
orchestrate one of Silicon Valley's most audacious business deals in  
the late 1990s, has joined the board of directors at the Electronic  
Frontier Foundation.

Kraus became a dot-com darling in 1999, when the company he co- 
founded with five engineering buddies, Excite Inc., merged with (At) 
Home Inc. - a $6.7 billion deal that was the largest Internet  
combination at the time. AT&T Corp. inherited (At)Home after the 1999  
acquisition of cable TV leader Tele-Communications Inc.

The merger appeared destined for success, with heavy traffic, leading  
technology and financing from blue chip venture capital firm Kleiner  
Perkins Caufield & Byers.

But Excite(At)Home suffered from a divisive corporate culture that  
pitted relatively young, marketing-savvy Excite employees against  
older engineers from (At)Home. By October 2001, the company declared  
bankruptcy and announced it would sell its high-speed network to AT&T  
for $307 million.

Kraus, a 1993 Stanford University grad who was in charge of cable  
operations after the merger, bore the brunt of the cultural divide.

After leaving Excite(At)Home in 2000, he founded DigitalConsumer.org,  
a group devoted to helping consumers get fair use access to digital  
media under copyright. He is the chief executive at JotSpot, which  
makes software for communally edited Web sites, and an angel investor  
who specializes in early-stage technology companies.

EFF is a civil-rights group specializing in digital issues such as  
intellectual property law, privacy and freedom of expression.

Kraus joins a prestigious list of seven other EFF board members,  
including Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig and Dave  
Farber, former chief technologist at the Federal Communications  
Commission.



06/22/05 18:44 EDT

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.


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